After Guardians of the Galaxy stole our hearts with a firefly-spouting tree and his emotionally wounded raccoon counterpart, it makes sense that movie audiences would want to see more work from co-writers James Gunn and Nicole Perlman, together or apart. And the idea of Perlman writing the screenplay for Marvel’s long-rumored Black Widow standalone movie sounds absolutely perfect.

But it’s just that—a rumor. Perlman herself debunked it.

On August 4, riding high from Guardians’ opening weekend box office success, Perlman made sure to rein in fan speculation before it ran rampant:

Hey folks, before rumors get out of hand: I wrote a treatment for Black Widow in 2010/2011, but I am not actively developing it right now.

Boo, but at least she gave us a clear answer. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has not had that luxury, dancing around an answer to the ever-present question of when we’ll see a Black Widow movie—or, really, any female-led Marvel film. Most recently, he told Comic Book Resources:

I think it comes down to timing, which is what I’ve sort of always said, and it comes down to us being able to tell the right story. I very much believe in doing it. I very much believe that it’s unfair to say, “People don’t want to see movies with female heroes,” then list five movies that were not very good, therefore, people didn’t go to the movies because they weren’t good movies, versus [because] they were female leads. And they don’t mention Hunger Games, Frozen, Divergent. You can go back to Kill Bill or Aliens. These are all female-led movies. It can certainly be done. I hope we do it sooner rather than later.

But we find ourselves in the very strange position of managing more franchises than most people have—which is a very, very good thing and we don’t take for granted, but is a challenging thing. You may notice from those release dates, we have three for 2017. And that’s because just the timing worked on what was sort of gearing up. But it does mean you have to put one franchise on hold for three or four years in order to introduce a new one? I don’t know. Those are the kinds of chess matches we’re playing right now.

Thing is, it’s hard to argue that now isn’t the time for a female superhero-led movie. Nerdist recently reported that 44 percent of Guardians’ opening-weekend audience was female—beating the previous record of 40 percent who turned out for The Avengers in 2012. Plus, Sony just threw down its gauntlet by announcing a lady-centric movie for 2017. If Perlman isn’t the one writing Black Widow, someone else should start, and soon.